Is the OBJ site locked to one 3D package?
No. The data is not locked to OBJ or to any one tool: the same bundle carries GLB for Blender, USDZ for Omniverse, DXF contours for SketchUp, and more, so each tool on the team gets the format it reads best.
Formats
How to get an OBJ site context model
By Coulter Heiberger · Updated
The lowest-common-denominator site mesh: OBJ terrain that thirty years of 3D software can read.
OBJ is the format you reach for when the tool on the other end is old, strict, or unknown. Nearly every 3D application of the last three decades reads it. To get a real-world site as OBJ, draw the area on Mantle Place and take the terrain mesh as OBJ, with its material file and the draped imagery texture alongside, included at no extra cost and ready for Rhino, 3ds Max, Blender, and more of the pipeline tools that predate glTF. The trade-offs are the format’s own: textures travel as separate files, there is no units metadata, and the ASCII geometry runs large. Where a modern importer exists, the same bundle’s GLB is the tidier choice. The point of OBJ is that it works everywhere else.
answers
Quick answers
step by step
How to do it
Draw the area
Define the extent of the site on Earth; the OBJ is clipped to that footprint like every other format in the bundle.
Download the bundle
In your vault, download the Real-time set: the OBJ with its companion material file and the imagery texture, beside the GLB, USDZ, and GeoTIFF.
Keep the files together
Move the OBJ, the material file, and the texture as a set. The material references the texture by path, and separating them strands the imagery.
Import and verify scale
Import into your tool and confirm the units read as meters; OBJ carries no units metadata, so the importer’s scale setting decides.
questions
Frequently asked
Why choose OBJ over glTF?
Compatibility. OBJ predates glTF by decades and imports into almost everything, including strict or legacy pipeline tools. If your importer handles GLB, prefer it; if not, the OBJ is there for exactly that case.
Does the OBJ include the aerial imagery?
Yes, as a separate texture referenced by the material file rather than embedded in the mesh. Keep the three files together and the imagery drapes onto the terrain on import.
Is OBJ still a reasonable format in 2026?
As a lowest common denominator, absolutely. It is verbose and carries no units or scene metadata, but its universality is unmatched, which is why the bundle carries it alongside the modern formats at no extra cost.
Get the data for your site.
Draw your area, read its Site Brief, and download a bundle you keep: terrain, imagery, CAD drawings, and more, ready for Unreal, Revit, Rhino, and more. $5 plus $2 per square kilometer, and 2 km² and under is free.
Native plugins: Mantle Place for Unreal and Mantle Place for Revit.
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